Pope Francis has urged religious leaders to help bring the world back from “the brink of a delicate precipice” as they must counter the “childish” whims of the powerful to start wars.
Speaking from Bahrain, the Sovereign Pontiff wove his speech around the role of religions in promoting peace, disarmament and social justice.
The Pope said that while the world seems to be parting like two opposing seas, the mere presence of religious leaders together is evidence that they “intend to navigate the same waters, choosing the path of encounter rather than confrontation,” notes Sky News.
“It seems that we are witnessing a dramatic and childish scenario”
“It is a striking paradox that while the majority of the world’s population is united in the face of the same difficulties, suffering from severe food, environmental and pandemic crises, as well as from increasingly outrageous global injustice, a few of the world’s powerful are trapped in a determined fight for partisan interests,” he said.
“It seems that we are witnessing a dramatic and childish scenario: in the garden of humanity, instead of cultivating what surrounds us, we play with fire, missiles and bombs, weapons that bring pain and death, covering our common home with ashes and hatred” , he said.
Pope Francis supports total ban on nuclear weapons
He added: “After two terrible world wars, a cold war that for decades kept the world in suspense, catastrophic conflicts taking place in every part of the globe and amid accusations, threats and condemnations, we continue to stand on the edge of a delicate precipices and we don’t want to fall”.
Pope Francis, who supports a total ban on nuclear weapons and has often condemned the global arms trade, said religious leaders cannot support wars – in an apparent reference to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who enthusiastically supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and which the pope implicitly criticized previously.
The pope also called for an end to Russia’s war “to spare the lives of innocents who have no involvement in this violent tragedy.”